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Printed from https://writing.com/main/books/entry_id/506023-A-post-on-writing
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Rated: 18+ · Book · Experience · #1254729
A compendium of my thoughts. Probably disturbing to most people.
#506023 added May 3, 2007 at 10:27pm
Restrictions: None
A post on writing
I've been reading a lot of really heavy formal writing recently.  a lot of experiment conclusions, reports to congress and the like, and I've noticed a certain device is used over and over again.  The purpose of this post is to identify this device and criticise it.  later, this post will discuss my personal views on it beyond simple criticism.
    That was the device.  yes, directly above this sentence.  I can't stand it.  It really grinds my gears to see people employ it.  it's terribly overused.  there are much better ways of sounding smarter than you really are, like putting an "indeed" at the beginning of every other sentence and repeating yourself in different words.  Indeed, there are a variety of ways to avoid using this device.  It really bites my ear that people can't write intelligently without explaining what they're going to do later on.  I think it's really bad that the people who use it arwe rarley being paid by the word, so the use of it mystifies me.  I can understand a sentence or two that lays out the purpose of a paper, but there's no reason to state the facts that you will present in the next dang paragraph!
    What really twists my duodenum is that this isn't some Lost English Relic of Oldde like the double-space after a colon that i use (I'll post on that some other time).  This is something second-graders' are taught.  I remember being criticised on it clearly because my teacher was so blunt about it.  she said, "Don't tell them [the reader] what you're going to do, just do it!" 
    If you do this, then I'm sorry, you have to stop.  for the sake of good writing, you can make one little sacrifice, right?  right?  Tell you what, I'll stop mixing in British quote style if you stop this nonsensical writing, okay?

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"My hand is not so great that showing it would make a difference." -persuader user from Kino no Tabi.

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Printed from https://writing.com/main/books/entry_id/506023-A-post-on-writing